Garden Design at Someday

Regular readers may recall that we named our garden and home “Someday” because this was someday for us. We’ve landed, we’re enjoying life, and this is what we’ve worked for. No sense putting off till tomorrow what you can enjoy today.

This picture shows the overall layout – between the garage concrete floor – the location of the garden shed (unpainted as of yet – family volunteers are not coming out of the woodwork) and the guest cottage (also unpainted in the new colors – hint – hint to family)

This is the next sketch in my book. You can see the garden shed has taken up a place at the end of the garden. With the location of the garage, this shed turned out to be in the middle of the driveway so the decision point was whether to hide it away behind the guest cottage (bunkhouse or bunkie in our family) or make it an integral part of this garden. I decided it was going to be an integral part of the garden and would be upgraded significantly as well in the process.

The garden design is now a little more like a garden. Some of the collections have been moved right away from this area because of soil depth. The beds are a little more winding and not as loose – it looks a bit more like a garden here.

Note the addition of the deer fencing (more on that later) in the top of the sketch. This is going to be necessary to protect the plants and will wind up protecting about 2 acres of ground (including the fruit orchard).

Hedges have also reared their head to differentiate some of the garden areas. The workroom with compost bins etc is going to be hidden away behind the guest cottage but I’ll need tractor access to this area for turning and collecting. (more on tractors later) And I do want manual access for wheelbarrows etc to this area for the cold frames and seedling germination areas.

The overall design is now more like a garden rather than a collection – the soils to the north will be left undisturbed (if soil is a term we can use on this rock shale) because it should provide an excellent area for species bulbs and some plants that demand excellent drainage. The area to the right of the picture will be completely rebuilt with excavation and soils being brought in to augment and replace the rock strata here.

The shaded in areas are pathways – from the garage to the house – from guest parking to the house and again back to the garden shed and a pathway inside the garden off to the south.

Again, this was a concept drawing for thinking on but it’s closer to what I want than the previous one.